From Away Read online

  ADVANCE PRAISE

  “From Away is a complex, surprising, and haunting novel. Sutton’s trademark wit lives within these pages, but here he reaches deeper, into a dark place, and finds something richer, something more human, than in any of his previous books. This is a page-turner of a different kind: mysterious, weird, and deeply affecting.”

  — Tod Goldberg, New York Times–bestselling author of Gangster Nation, Gangsterland, and Living Dead Girl

  “I loved this book—it’s the best take on ghosts and how they work that I’ve ever read. Scary and mad but real, with crackling dialogue, From Away is a rare creature: a proper novel and a proper ghost story. I massively enjoyed it.”

  — Steven Moffat, co-creator of Sherlock and writer/producer of Dr. Who

  “Phoef Sutton’s From Away is a unique trip of a book. It starts off as a family drama, then morphs into an intense ghost story. It’s about finding love in the real world and finding freedom to escape into the real hereafter. It’s funny, wild, and touching, and not like any other novel I’ve ever read.”

  — Robert Ward, author of Red Baker and Four Kinds of Rain

  Also by Phoef Sutton

  Colorado Boulevard

  Heart Attack & Vine

  Crush

  15 Minutes to Live

  By Janet Evanovich and Phoef Sutton

  Curious Minds

  Wicked Charms

  Copyright © 2018 by Phoef Sutton

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  “Adventures of Isabel” copyright ©1936 by Ogden Nash, renewed. Reprinted by permission of Curtis Brown, Ltd.

  Published by Prospect Park Books

  2359 Lincoln Avenue

  Altadena, California 91001

  www.prospectparkbooks.com

  Distributed by Consortium Book Sales & Distribution www.cbsd.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Sutton, Phoef, author.

  Title: From away / Phoef Sutton.

  Description: Altadena, California: Prospect Park Books, [2018]

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017040327 (print) | LCCN 2017043967 (ebook) | ISBN 9781945551116 (Ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: Psychological fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Psychological. | FICTION / Family Life. | FICTION / Suspense. | GSAFD: Suspense fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3569.U896 (ebook) | LCC PS3569. U896 F76 2018 (print) | DDC 813/.54--dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017040327

  Cover design by David Ter-Avanesyan

  Book layout and design by Amy Inouye

  To my brother John,

  who made me want to be a writer

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ONE

  Christmas is a time for ghost stories.

  That’s why I’m making this for you now, to set aside and wrap in a red and green ribbon and give to you on your twenty-first birthday.

  I have to believe you’ll have a twenty-first birthday. I have to believe you’ll grow up tall and straight and strong and beautiful, even though believing doesn’t come naturally to me.

  Well, naturally or not, I’ll will myself to do it; to believe that one day I’ll hand this to you and you’ll open it and read all about your first Christmas on Fox Island and assume you got it mixed up with childhood fairy tales and fantasies. Probably you won’t even believe it after you’ve read it.

  No, I’m wrong; you’ll believe it, unless you’ve changed completely. Believing is easy for you, and not just because you’re a child. It’s a part of who you are to think that there’s wonder and mystery in the world. I could never do that; that’s just one of the ways you and your poor uncle are different.

  So, I’m telling you a ghost story even though I never believed in ghosts. In those days, a lot of people did. Ghosts and angels and all that. I’m writing about the end of the twentieth century here, the years of the internet and Prozac and Viagra, so it’s no wonder that people wanted to believe there was a supernatural heart beating somewhere just out of sight.

  The first ghost I remember ever seeing was in my seventh-grade P.E. class. I didn’t buy it. I might have been convinced if it had looked anything like a ghost. Transparency would have been nice. Strands of ectoplasm streaming from a skull-like face would have helped a lot. Or a shrouded form floating above the floor; if I’d seen that, I’d have been a convert in a heartbeat. Instead, what I saw looked a lot like my junior high gym teacher.

  I was policing the equipment after a vigorous game of Murder Ball (also called Dodge Ball or Kill the Queer—depends on what part of the country you’re from) in which I’d received more than the usual number of stinging blows to the face from the tightly inflated ball. The resounding ping produced when rubber struck my cheekbone was bringing joyous merriment to the line of kids across from me. Fortunately, David Needles, four boys down, gave an even more delightful whimper when the ball hit his midsection, so the boys were distracted from me and the game turned into something like a handball match, with David Needles filling the role of the wall. A part of me felt sorry for him, but mostly I was relieved they’d found another victim. In junior high, as in war, it doesn’t pay to care too much about the other guy.

  So, I was left to concentrate on the throbbing pain in my head while Mr. Ingram, the new gym teacher, cheered my classmates on. What it all had to do with meeting the President’s Physical Fitness Standards was a mystery to me.

  When the bell rang signaling the end of class and sending new blasts of pain through my head, I remembered it was my turn as Equipment Monitor. It wasn’t a job anybody loved, but at least it kept me out of the showers. So, while the rest of the boys ran off to inflict new and unconsciously homoerotic torment on David Needles, I went to collect the balls.

  Bending down to pick them up made my pummeled face hurt all over again, and I had to suppress a flood of nausea as I stood up. That’s when I saw Mr. Meloni, blue gym suit and all, sitting in the bleachers, his referee’s whistle resting on his massive gut.

  Nothing unusual about that. Mr. Meloni always sat there. Only thing was, Mr. Meloni had died of a brain aneurism three weeks before. I dropped the balls, and they pinged off the floor and rolled away.

  “Pick ’em up, faggot,” said the ghost of Mr. Meloni.

  Instinctively, I glanced away at the rolling balls, and when I looked back to the bleachers Mr. Meloni was gone. All that was left of him was an emotion washing through me, like a sound wave broadcasting from where Meloni had been sitting; pure, unadulterated annoyance. Once that passed, all trace of him was gone.

  And I didn’t believe he’d ever been there, not for a minute. It must have been an illusion, brought on by the pain in my head and my own
vivid imagination.

  Why didn’t I believe? I know you would have, but you have to remember, Maggie, you’re not me. I’m a third child, and my mom told me there was no Santa Claus before I turned four. Marvels were never a part of my world.

  So I analyzed it. I asked myself, if Mr. Meloni had traveled back from beyond the grave, wouldn’t he have had more to say? Wouldn’t he have delivered some pronouncement, like Marley did to Scrooge, about how life should be lived? Or, like Hamlet’s father, wouldn’t he have relayed some vital piece of information that was disturbing his eternal rest? Wouldn’t he have returned to impart some threat or some warning, some regret or some insight? He wouldn’t have come back to say, “Pick ’em up, faggot.” He wouldn’t have bothered to resurrect himself just to send me a psychic message that he was still annoyed with my incompetence. It wouldn’t have been worth the trip.

  Also, wouldn’t the experience of dying, of meeting St. Peter and sitting at the right hand of the Lord, or of descending to the depths of Hell, or of floating into that bright light people were always going on about, have changed the guy in some way? Instead, the Mr. Meloni I saw on the bleachers was the same asshole he’d been in life. And if you weren’t transformed in some transcendent and cosmic way, I wondered, what was the point of dying in the first place? And, most damning of all, if you were going to come back, why in hell would you appear to a nobody like me?

  So, as I gathered the balls again, I dismissed the whole thing, denied it, put it out of my mind. Until the next time.

  I went to get a Coke just now and to see how your mother is doing. She’s sleeping in a chair beside you; she tries to slip into the bed with you, but the nurses always catch her and shoo her out. I’m back in this typically depressing hospital waiting room, sitting by a grim little aluminum Christmas tree and flipping channels on a TV mounted high on the wall. No holiday programs, even though it’s Christmas Eve. Why do they run all of them two weeks early nowadays? I could really use the Grinch or Frosty to keep me company. Or even some half-assed remake of A Christmas Carol.

  Ghosts and Christmas. Most people don’t get the connection anymore, but your grandpa taught us all about it. I wish you could have known him. He was a professor of English Lit at Georgetown, and every year he had us practice the old Victorian tradition of telling spooky stories on Christmas Eve. We got really good at it, me and your mother and your Uncle George. While our friends were hanging stockings, putting out milk and cookies for Santa, and watching Charlie Brown find the true meaning of Christmas, the Kehoe kids were sitting in our dark living room, flashlights under our chins, telling tales of reclaimed limbs and family curses and premature burials.

  Your grandmother, the math teacher, didn’t approve of these flights of fancy, of course, but we appeased her by assuring her that we all knew it was make-believe. Ghosts were not a part of her worldview; she had little patience for Santa and none at all for a walking dead apparition like Jesus.

  Going to sleep after our spooky stories, the visions that danced in our heads were white-garbed specters and headless widows, and the things we heard scampering across the roof or skittering down the chimney were not coming to give gifts. Not that they frightened us. The imaginary thrills and chills were delightful and intriguing; they gave just the right amount of spice to counter the sugary sweetness of Everybody Else’s Christmas. A Kehoe Christmas was naughty and nice, candy and coal. That was as it should be, because Christmas was a magic time, and magic was never all light, but always half dark, just like the world.

  So, with an upbringing like that, it didn’t really surprise me two weeks ago when I was awakened on a cold December night by the voice of my lost love. All right, maybe Anne wasn’t dead—maybe she’d only dumped me. But that didn’t make the sound of her voice any less disturbing and heartbreaking. It still rocketed me from sleep and left me in a cold sweat to face a sleepless night in my dark apartment. You don’t have to be dead to be a ghost.

  I glanced at my bedside clock. 10:04. That was another way this night reminded me of childhood Christmases; I’d tried to go to bed as early as possible so as to make the morning come more quickly. Not in hopes of receiving presents or treats. The coming day held no special promise except that I wouldn’t have to spend it alone in the bed I’d shared with Anne.

  I turned on the lamp. All alone. The apartment seemed even more desolate in the light. My eyes fell with perverse accuracy on the traces of her still left in the room. Those books she’d loaned me—if I’d gotten around to reading them, would she still have wanted to see other people? But I’d listened to her albums, hadn’t I? Sang along with her to the tuneful angst of Paula Cole and Sheryl Crow, and that hadn’t stopped her from wanting more room.

  I knew her bra was still in the second drawer, even though I couldn’t see it. She’d forgotten it one hurried morning when she’d been late for work. I’d called her when I found it while making the bed that afternoon and we’d laughed, and I’d said I was holding it hostage and we’d laughed again. Now it would be nothing more than the embarrassing centerpiece of the always hideous returning-of-the-borrowed-stuff encounter we had yet to schedule.

  It occurred to me I should just do it right then; I was up anyway. Put all her things in a box and drop it on her doorstep. How could I be expected to sleep with these reminders of her lurking about the room, ready to ambush me wherever I glanced?

  And that voice. That beautiful, husky, just-about-to-break voice I’d loved so much and that I could hear so well it might have been in the room with me. How could I sleep at all when I never knew when it might call out again, saying those words I knew so well: “Anne isn’t here right now, so leave a message after the beep.”

  It served me right for dating the girl who lived in the apartment next door.

  I jumped out of bed, sending the television remote, which had been tangled in my sheets, sailing across the room, hitting the floor with a rattle and a scattering of batteries. Hell with it. I padded on my bare feet to the living room, pulling up my pajama pants as I walked. I used to sleep in the nude, but I had begun to find the sight of my own naked body just another depressing reminder of Anne.

  (Suddenly, I’m thinking I can never show this to you, picturing you as the innocent girl you are now. But you’ll be a woman when you read it, wise in the ways of love. Depressing thought.)

  Looking out the window, I saw a nightclub cruise ship gliding down the black river, lights ablaze. I could get in my car and be in Georgetown in fifteen minutes. I could be sitting in Blues Alley, listening to jazz and drinking from a longneck bottle. I could be grabbing life and living it.

  I picked up one of my many videos of Italian horror pictures, went back to my room, reassembled the remote, and fell into the bed to watch somebody else’s nightmare.

  Fifteen minutes later, her voice was coming through the wall again. “Anne isn’t here right now, so leave a message after the beep.” And then, far more horrifying than anything Baron Blood was doing on my TV screen, the message began. “Hey, honey, this is Bill—”

  I turned up the volume so that Elke Sommer’s screams could drown out the rest of Bill’s sentence. (Dear God, what kind of nitwit would call a woman like Anne “honey” or “sweetie” or anything at all ending in a long “e”?) When it was safe and silent, I shut off the set and called your mother to ask her advice.

  “Don’t do it,” Charlotte said.

  “But she gave me a key. I could just pop in, turn the volume down on the answering machine, pop out—”

  “Sammy,” my sister’s voice was calm, but insistent. When we were kids, she used to do that voice in imitation of our mother. Now that she was a mother herself, she did it for real. “This is a terrible idea. Don’t do it.”

  “Why not? Just pop—”

  “Don’t pop, Sammy. Trust me, breaking into her apartment is a terrible idea—”

  “It’s not breaking. She gave me her key.”

  “When you were dating. Now you’re not. So, al
l key rights have been revoked.”

  “No, no, you’re wrong there. She gave me the key before we were dating. So I could feed her fish when she spent that weekend in Baltimore. So, it’s not a ‘boyfriend key.’ It’s a ‘good neighbor key,’ and I’m still her neighbor.”

  “Sammy.” I could hear the bedsprings squeak as Charlotte sat up, taking a more insistent pose. “When you move to the boyfriend role, that totally preempts the neighbor role. You can’t go back.”

  “Who says?”

  “And why would a good neighbor break into her apartment at eleven o’clock at night, anyway?”

  “Not break, ‘let.’ Let myself in.”

  “But why?”

  “Well…,” I knew I was losing the debate on points. I always lost debates with my sister on points. But, ultimately, I always won them through blind persistence. “Her machine’s on too loud. She doesn’t want everyone in the building hearing her messages.”

  “You’re the only one who can hear them.”

  “Well, she especially wouldn’t want me to hear them. I’m her ex-boyfriend. Those calls are personal.”

  “So, to preserve her privacy, you’re going to break into her apartment?”

  “If I have to.”

  “Sammy, if it was daylight, you’d know this was a bad idea.”

  Another voice came over the line. Distant, but piping and clear and full of energy. “Who are you talking to, Mommy?”

  Charlotte’s voice sounded even sleepier as she answered, face away from the phone. “Darling, why are you up?”

  “I heard you talking.”

  “God, it is so past your bedtime.”

  “I’m not tired. Who’s on the telephant?”

  “Uncle Sammy.”

  “Hi, Unca!” you called out. “Can I say hi?”

  (Yes, that’s you, appearing in the story at last. And not a moment too soon, I can hear you saying.)

  “Yeah, tell him he’s crazy,” your mother said.

  You took the phone, dropped it, then picked it up again. “Hi, Unca. Mom says you’re crazy.”